Bottoms Up - book discontinued by Cleis Press Inc. - review by Kayla

Bottom's Up is an erotica book of "spanking good stories" published by Cleis Press and edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel. It's a paperback book that comes with black and white pages on the inside. The book has 189 pages. Inside those pages are 20 different stories about spanking. The front of the book depicts a woman bent over nude and awaiting a spanking. The backside just has text. This book could easily be read in public if you could keep the front cover of the book hidden.

Something to know about this book is the theme - it's "Spanking Good Stories". This means that all of the stories in this compilation are focused around the spanking of the story. While this is definitely really hot if you have a fetish for spanking, if you don't, it won't be arousing. That is, the stories themselves focus purely on the spanking - sometimes there is sex, most of the times, there isn't. The spanking is described at length instead of sex like most erotica would have. So if you love spanking, this will be orgasmic, but if you were hoping to see a mixture of spanking and sex in all of your stories, it won't happen as often as you'd like.

This book is mostly heterosexual - just like most erotica books. There are a couple lesbian stories and a couple threesome spanking stories, but I don't remember there being any gay-centered stories. The stories are told from the third person as well as the first person - including one second person story. For the most part, the stories are told from the point of view of the one being spanked - but once in awhile, the third person stories end up including the opinion of the spanker as well as the one being spanked.

I enjoyed the fact that not all of the stories were BDSM-related. Some of the spankings just took place between two people who happened to discover a fetish for spanking. Some did take place between a dedicated Dominant/submissive relationship, but not all of them were like that. This gave a really nice variety in your stories. In fact, in one of the stories, the woman receives her spanking solo! Along with variety in characters, there's a variety in the strength of the spankings. In some, it's a nice, teasing spanking while in others the person is described to have bruised and received other markings.

For the most part, the stories focus largely on the spanking. There is a bit of attention paid to the plot, but it's obvious the plot is only explained just to allow you to fully enjoy the spanking included later. One of the neater stories was a story about a swinging couple who end up starting their own swinging "spanking" group where couples come around (and apparently get high which I wasn't so fond about) and all lay on a bed and have a giant spanking-orgy. It was interesting.

One of the most unique stories I read was "The Spanking Machine" by Rachel Kramer Bussel. In the story, a woman, who can never manage to find a partner to spank her, actually orders a spanking machine. She receives it at her house and puts it together, and the rest of the story is about her using it. (Yes, folks, these machines do exist. The one Rachel Kramer mentioned in her story "Robospanker" can easily be found if you just do a Google search. It's amazing to watch.)

In "Reenactment" by Zille Defeu, a woman wants to act out her fantasy of being "tortured" by the evil villain. When they go to a Ren Faire-type event, her girlfriend is more than happy to oblige her.

In "Bossy" by Summer Marsden, a college-aged woman is happily doing her homework when she looks up to see a young man surfing paddling pictures on the internet. It turns her on, and she escapes to her car to masturbate. When the young man happens to have parked right next to her, it leads them both to a sexy spanking session on an outdoor picnic table.

In "The Purple Balloon" by Tess Danesi, a woman, while developing sexually, ended up rubbing herself against a balloon and was discovered and spanked for it. Now she chooses to seek out a professional Dominatrix to help her reenact the scene that has turned her on in her fantasies for so long.

Bottom's Up is clearly an amazing choice for those who are turned on by the idea of a spanking. However, if you were hoping to see spanking involved with lots of sex, that isn't shown too much in the book. All of the stories are well-written, have a good plot behind them, and are just downright fun to read. If you have any kinky bone in your body, Bottom's Up is worth picking up for a read - just don't expect too much in terms of detailed sex.

I haven't re-read anything in Bottoms Up; it was an okay book for the first read-through, but since nothing really stuck out about the book, I don't really remember any of the stories, so I've never really had the urge to re-read it.